Germany has been getting a lot of bad press recently thanks to the Pegida and "Pegada" marches. International observers have been wringing their hands, worried that the country is sliding back into a permanent xenophobia. This is unfair. The Pegida "movement" is just a German variation of the American Tea Party, complete with its own Sara Palin - but without the eyebrows (Kathrin Oertel). Like the Tea Party, Pegida is comprised primarily of frustrated middle-aged white men who feel marginalized in a globalized world they no longer recognize. Unfortunately, this group is easily manipulated by right-wing, even neo-Nazi, elements (especially pronounced in the Leipzig "Legida" copycat marches). For the most part, the Pegida (and Legida) protesters have been vastly outnumbered by "anti-Pegida" demonstrators - although this is not often reported in the international press:

"There are two ways to look at the situation. The optimistic take is to note that, for all the attention Pegida gets inside of Germany and abroad, Germany has never been as liberal, culturally diverse and open toward minorities as it is today.

Last year a biennial poll conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a foundation associated with the left-wing Social Democrats (and thus unlikely to underestimate the problem), found that anti-foreigner attitudes were at a historic low. While its 2012 poll found that about a quarter of Germans reported hostile views toward foreigners, only 7.5 percent did in 2014. And anti-Semitism, which is on the rise elsewhere in Europe, has dropped significantly, to 4.1 percent from 8.6.

Apart from the polls, there is quite a bit of evidence for a new openness. On Jan. 12, 100,000 people went to the streets nationwide in counterdemonstrations against Pegida, showing their solidarity with German Muslims. In Leipzig, 4,800 pro-Pegida protesters were met by 30,000 counterprotesters."

I expect that the Pegida movement will play itself out in the near future - just like the Tea Party in the US. Already there are signs that it is self-destructing. Hate requires quite a bit of energy and is unsustainable over the long run. Think of Brecht's poem Maske des Bösen:

Albrecht Müller, editor-in-chief of the influential left-wing blog NachDenkSeiten is upset that people in Germany or the United States would criticize Russia for passing laws that expressly discriminate against gays and lesbians. In fact he finds it downright hypocritical:

Today's New York Times has a front-page article on the re-emergence of anti-Semitism in Europe (Europe's Anti-Semitism Comes Out of the Shadows). Of course the article mentions the high=profile violent incidents, like the murder of four visitors to a Jewish museum in Brussels and the firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal. But much more sinister is the casual acceptance of anti-Semitism across broad swaths of European society:

"But there is also concern about what some see as an insidious “softer” anti-Jewish bias, which they fear is creeping into the European mainstream and undermining the postwar consensus to root out anti-Semitism. Now the question is whether a subtle societal shift is occurring that has made anti-Jewish remarks or behavior more acceptable.

“The fear is that now things are blatantly being said openly, and no one is batting an eyelid,” said Jessica Frommer, 36, a secular Jew who works for a nonprofit organization in Brussels. “Modern Europe is based on stopping what happened in the Second World War. And now 70 years later, people standing near the European Parliament are shouting, ‘Death to Jews!’ ”

The Tageszeitungreports that a woman working in the Israeli embassy in Berlin has to spend the weekend deleting hate messages that pour onto the embassy's Facebook page and YouTube site. Typical comments are "Hamas should use Zyklon B","The world would be so much better without Jews." "Hitler, where are youuuu?" "You filthy Jews need to be gassed!."

(Another category of hate mail: the recipients are not simply compared to Nazis, they are threaten to share the same fate as the victims of Nazi violence. A commenter named "Jochen" writes: "Up to now I didn't like what the Nazis had done, but now I see that they left too many of you alive! I just hope that Iran can wipe you all out some day!")

But what really discourages me is this report coming from a "West German trade school." Apparently teenagers regularly use the term "Dirty Jew" as a casual insult among themselves.

("Jew" is a customary insult in the West German trade school 19 year-old explains that Jews are usuers and extortionists, they drive people to ruin. I'm astonished by how often in class I hear remarks like "Shufa - they're all Jews". ("Schufa is the German credit bureau). When a student shouts out "the Jews control Aldi" the teacher responds "I could say something. But?" He lets it go.")

When the class discusses the history of National Socialism in Germany, a student comes up with a response that is all too common:

(A student defends the Wehrmacht against the accusation that they waged a criminal war. His grandfather told him what really happened. For this family's history the Germans were the ones that suffered in the war. Besides, the Jews weren't real Germans.)

(Boston Strong was the motto for these days. Instead of leaving the place where the tragedy happened, many marathon runnvers remained in the city, demsontrated their spirit of resistance and donated blood for the injured. Thousands held a candellight vigil for Martin Richard, the boy with the peace poster; thousands ringed the streets when Presiden Barack Obama came to the memorial service; tens of thousands attended the next home game of the Boston Red Sox. "The good people of Boston," Obama said then.)

Just as the bombs exploded at the Marathon finish line, my wife and I were on a train pulling into North Station (my wife was to attend a conference in Boston). We arrived at scene of panic and chaos, since there were false reports of bombs going off across the city. Many were streaming into the station, anxious to leave Boston, and we also thought about turning around and getting on the next train out of town. But we decided to stay, and thus experienced the next traumatic days as the people of Boston coped with the tragedy. At our hotel we encountered marathon runners from Italy, Ireland and Australia, dazed and amazed by what they had just experienced. The next couple of days everyone went about their business - there was a sense of fear everywhere, especially in the subway, since we knew the bombers were among us and may strike again. Tensions continued to mount over the next few days as the news media - led by CNN - came out with mistaken reports that the terrorists had been captured. FInally, things came to a climax four days after the bombing with the bloody shootout and capture of of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

What has happened in Boston over the past twelve months has been truly amazing. The city came together to embrace the doqens of victims and help them heal from the terrible wounds - both physical and emotional.

We are getting close to the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Sebastian Fischer makes a good point about the citizens of Boston:

(The Tsarnaev trial is expected to last at least four months, up to one hundred witnesses will testify. The 30 criminal charges include among other thing four counts of murder and the use of weapons of mass destruction. Even so, life imprisonment is a more likely sentence than the death penalty: for the verdict must be reached by a jury, and if the majority opinion of the people of Massachusetts is any indication, then the accused's life will be spared.)

Boston, city of great universities and enlightenment, the center of the abolitionist movement, last put a citizen to death in 1947. The last thing Boston wants to do is respond to this tragedy with another killing.

Nearly 25 years after the collapse of the "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" some high-school history teachers are telling their students ""Es war nicht alles schlecht in der DDR". Dictatorships, they teach, are not so bad - as long as you "play by the rules".

("Life was good in the GDR... And you come here today to denigrate the GDR. Nothing can happen to you in a dictatorship if you play by the rules. I really wonder why you came if you just want to say bad things about Stendal.")

("I have different opinion than you about the GDR. I lived next to the border fence- it never once bothered me. We could travel to Hungary or Bulgaria- that was plenty for us.")

Comments like this are made openly to a vistor to the schools. But what are teachers telling their students when no outsiders are around? What are students learning about recent history? And could this Ostalgie (nostalgia for the old East Germany) result in hostility or plain indifference to democratic principles?

Frank Schmiechen, of the Hamburg daily Die Welt, spent four months living in California. We was so smitten by the "das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten" that he published a love letter to the United States:

(You received me with open arms. You approached me with openness and curiosity. You took me in for four months. Even though you had no idea who I am, what I can do, what I want. That didn't matter. You answered all my questions, and politely ignored my strange accent and mediocre English.)

Many in Europe scoff at how friendly people are in the US - a sign of superficiality. For Schmiechen it was a breath of fresh air:

(Your friendliness is often seen as superficial. Most of all by us Germans. I wish we had more of this in my homeland. I like friendly surfaces. Maybe your friendliness is just a sign of good upbringing. And behind all the friendly banter there is often an intelligent mind.)

Schmiechen is not blind to the social inequality, the struggles of many just to keep from falling deeper into poverty. But he admires the risk-taking, the pragmatism and can-do attitude of Americans. Not to mention the celebration of success here - in contrast to the deep suspicion of success in Germany.

In the end, it's the fact that America is constantly re-inventing itself that he most admires:

(It seems that you're always able to keep changing, to grow, to improve. That's what I like about you. And please don't get out of sorts by those in old Europe who always know better. In the end you'll probably once again have to help out out of a mess.)

To be sure, four months is not a great amount of time to get to know another country. And California is not representative for all of the vast US. Would Schmiechen have been so enthusiastic if he had spent a winter in Utica, New York?

Still, it is illuminating to read through the many comments to this piece. Those who have traveled to the US or lived here for some time for the most part share Schmiechen's positive view. More common, however were comments like this from a "Serpentine":

(Too bad that Herr Schmiechen chose to highlight only the good side of life in America. Not one word about the 50 million Americans who survive only because of food stamps. Not one word about the same number of Americans without health insurance. Not one word on the crumbling infrastructure like in a Third World country. The list goes on and on, but, hey, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.)

Given the current sentiment in Germany, publishing this glowing tribute to America in a major news outlet is truly an act of courage.

I am currently reading Clemens Meyer's Im Stein, a panoramic mosaic of the sex industry in Germany (review to follow). Meyer doesn't make any moral judgment, but just lets the voices of the prostitutes, brothel owners, pimps, johns, and the police speak for themselves.

Prostitution is legal in Germany. Sex workers pay taxes and receive the same health and pension benefits as any other employee. Is this a good thing? I guess the only logical answer is: it's better than the alternative. I watched the German talk show Günther Jauch the other evening which dealt with the topic. The guests included a young woman who abandoned her studies in computer science to become an enthusiastic prostitute, as well as a bordello magnate who was proud of his exemplary "customer service" ( you might still be able to watch the show on the Mediathek.)

There are an estimated 400,000 sex workers in Germany - more than in any other country in Europe. The overwhelming majority are "independent contractors" and are from countries to the east, such as Romania, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. No question that many are the victims of human trafficking and were "tricked" into the profession in their desire to leave the poverty and dismal prospects in their home countries.

Still, there are a vocal minority who are proud of their independence and vehemently deny that they are being exploited in any way. One anonymous "sex entrepreneur" made her views known in Die Zeit. This woman turned to freelance prostitution after being treated shabbily by the local employent office, where she was only offered minimum wage jobs (actually, there is no minimum wage in Germany). Now she is simply following the neoliberal agenda:

("No one can accuse me of being a financial burden on society. I have simply done what the proponents of neoliberalism constantly preach: I discovered that there is a need for the services that I offer and created my own job. Sure I make some of my income by performing sex work and I'm just happy that at the age of over 50 I 've discovered this possibility for myself.)

I wonder what the moralistic libertarians in America ike Rand Paul, who are constantly complaining about the "lazy poor people",would say to this enterprising woman.

While waiting for my UBER car to show up and checking out @UberFacts on Twitter, I reflected on the growing use of über (or uber) in everyday English ; über is everywhere (or überall). How did this happen?

(The OED explains that the word "superman" as a philosophical concept has been somewhat contaminated by the comic books. So in academic circles the German word übermensch (with our without the umlaut) is much preferred when talking about Nietzsche.

So perhaps we can trace the massive use of the word über/ueber back to that; for the past 20 years it has enjoyed an incredible career as a way to intensify meaning in English.)

As I noted elsewhere, Nietzsche has had a profound influence on American intellectual life. So it is fitting that at least one word - über - finds its way into popular culture here.

When analyzing the virulent anti-American sentiment that has resurfaced in Germany - especially among left-wing pundits and observers - following the Snowden revelations concerning massive data-mining, it is useful to consider the recent history of anti-Semitism.

Martin Engelberg, writing in Die Presse, sees a close connection between both positions, which are particularly entrenched in the German left today:

(Both the Americans and the Jews personify certain social phemonena - especially modernity - and are reviled for this. Jew and Americans are seen as "the other" and "evil", since they are contrary to the superior moral standing of the Volk. Already at the beginning of the 2oth century the "American spirit" was seen as a corrosive influence on the "German spirit; the same as well with the "Jewish spirit", the resistance against which reached its apex in tne Nazi era.)

Underlying both anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, according to Martin Engelberg, is a feeling of profound powerlessness:

(It is taken for granted that both the Americans and "the Jews" have the power to influence world events down to the smallest detail. They pose such a great threat since both have "burrowed" deeply in European society. Up until the Nazi era the Jews lived in the heart of European society, while the US forced itself into the European soul with its language, its culture, its American way of life. The pure soul of the Volk must take every opportunity to throw off this dominance.)

But Engelberg's critique is tame compared with that of Andrei S. Markovits, who sees anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism as "Siamese Twins" in Europe today. Markovits has written a good book about the history of anti-Americanism in Europe: Amerika, dich hasst sich's besser. In another essay he writes about how the perception of an all-powerful Israel has bled into the perception of an all-powerful America - creating a two-headed evil monster in the left-wing imagination:

In today's intellectual Europe it is illegitimate to view European Jews
as Shylocks (or deride them as such), but it is entirely legitimate to
portray those Jews who, instead of fitting the picture of the weak
pariah, have built their own state (namely Israel and the Israelis) as
Rambos and to hate them as such.13 It
is the figure of the tough, aggressive, unscrupulous, and ruthless Jew
in the form of the powerful, brutal Israeli that is lending a new
dimension to contemporary European anti-Semitism. And it is strength and
(military) power that assigns anti-Americanism an auxiliary and
indispensable role in this new form of anti-Semitism (outfitted as
hostility toward Israel)14 and that turns these two phenomena into politically potent Siamese twins throughout Europe.

Until recently, it was clear how the U.S.-Israel relationship fit into
this line of thinking: It was the powerful United States that was using
Israel as a marionette or "aircraft carrier" for its "imperialist" and
"neo-colonial" schemes; the U.S. was the real power, and Israel was the
henchman. But in the discourse of many Europeans after 11 September 2001
- and especially since the Iraq war - this has been reversed almost 180
degrees.

The current controversy around the spying activity of the HSA will gradually fade away, but anti-Americanism is bound to resurface in Germany over and over again.